


The Symmetry Will Keep Me Close To You

by theshipsfirstmate



Series: Sight of the Sun [7]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Post-Finale Fic, road trip fic drive, roadtrip!olicity, the unproposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 21:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4153638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-finale road trip fic. The day before they return to Starling, Felicity makes him stop at the first town on their route that has a nail salon with semi-decent Yelp reviews.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Symmetry Will Keep Me Close To You

_A/N: I felt like I’ve danced around this not-really-proposal enough, it was probably time to just up and write it. It sort of feels like an ending to this series but I don’t think it is. This piece has been time-hoppy a.f. and will continue on, I have at least one more solid idea that will fit in somewhere. Though I am sort of running out of lines from the song for titles..._

**The Symmetry Will Keep Me Close To You**

_“I know we stayed up talking in circles,_  
_but I like to think the symmetry will keep me close to you”_  
_\- fun. “Sight of the Sun”_

The day before they return to Starling, Felicity makes him stop at the first town on their route that has a nail salon with semi-decent Yelp reviews.

“An incoming CEO can’t have nail beds this janky, Oliver,” she lectures when he tries to protest. “She just can’t.”

He rolls his eyes and pretends to grimace, but betrays the whole thing by chuckling a little, and she tosses up another silent wish that his laugh sticks around once they’re back within the Starling City limits.

When they arrive for her appointment, he follows her in sheepishly and actually takes a seat like he’s going to stay, folding himself into the tiny plastic chair next to her. She lets him fidget for just a second, because it’s a strange kind of hilarious, how he looks less comfortable here than he had in chains at the police precinct a few months back. He’s a ridiculous man but he’s finally hers, and the whole thing still makes her feel a little giddy.

“Oliver,” she stage-whispers, watching his eyes dart from station to station, from pumice stone to cuticle trimmer. “You don’t have to wait here. Come back for me in like, an hour.”

Relief floods his face with a brilliant, grateful smile, but as he stands, she’s rudely distracted by a glimpse of one of the other salon patrons eyeing them. Well eying Oliver, really. When her eyes land on Felicity, they’re full of questions, most of which are some variation on _Who are you?_ and _How did you?_

She realizes that these kinds of queries will only be amplified once they’re back in Starling, where he’s socially significant in addition to being physically so, but before the ugly thoughts even have a chance to manifest themselves, he’s leaning down to press a goodbye kiss right on her lips.

“Half an hour,” he breathes against her mouth, pecking her again quick. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

And he is, carrying a big gift box from what looks like a fancy boutique, and she doesn’t even feel bad about flashing the still bug-eyed patron a smug smile as he cautiously helps her out of the massage chair.

“What’d you get?” she asks him eagerly once they’re out at the curb and he’s opening her car door for her as she fans her nails.

“It’s a surprise,” he smiles.

She lunges for the box anyway.

“Don’t,” Oliver warns her teasingly, holding it up out of her reach. “Don’t touch me, your nails are probably still tacky. You didn’t sit long enough.”

She must look at him like he’s speaking Mandarin because he just shrugs a little sheepish and explains: “Not all girls let you leave.”

She tries not to, really she does. But the thought of pre-island Oliver Queen sitting stiffly in a nail salon as pre-island Laurel Lance got her mani/pedi makes her laugh out loud. When he joins her, she takes it as distraction enough to reach for the box again. But he’s quicker than her, of course he is, and before she knows it, he’s got her wrists in one hand behind her back and her body pressed up against his, other hand still holding the box aloft.

“Ugh, the struggles of having a ninja boyfriend,” she whines as she struggles half-heartedly against him and his eyes go sharp then soft in a second and then he’s bending his head down to kiss her hard. Is that really the first time she’s said that out loud? She’s been stuck on “partner” in her head, and it’s not like she’s had to really _refer_ to him all that much on this trip (although she’s certainly said his name an awful lot).

When she pulls back from his lips, she notices over his shoulder that Nosy Nellie at the salon is still gawking at them through the window, now joined by a few of the other patrons and manicurists. Good, she thinks. Let them look. Let there be as many witnesses to this as possible.

 

* * *

 

She tears the box open once they’re in their hotel room a hundred or so miles down the route, and immediately she knows that she was correct in her assumption that it’s something fancy for dinner tonight. But the smile drops off her face and and her heart skips in the bad way when she realizes exactly what kind of fancy it is.

“Oliver,” she asks cautiously, trying not to let her voice shake, “why did you buy me this dress?”

“I just wanted to see it on you,” he shrugs, but he won’t meet her eyes for more than a second at a time. She takes a step closer to him, holding the red material up to meet his ever-shifting sight line.

“This looks exactly like the dress I wore on our first date.”

“Does it?”

“ _Oliver_.”

“I noticed the earrings,” he shrugs and that’s probably the last thing she was expecting him to say, and is actually, totally adorable in their special heartbreaking kind of way. But still…

“I can’t believe you did this.”

“I just thought it would be nice,” he drops his head as he buttons up his dress shirt and his voice sounds so small.

“You don’t think it’s kind of morbid?” she asks him, honestly curious. In all the ways she’s imagined them getting it together, in all the dreams she allowed herself while he was gone, never once did she imagine them redoing that nightmare of a first date. “I mean, shouldn’t we be looking forward instead of thinking back to something that was just, totally doomed from the start?”

When she looks up from where she’s trailed off, she sees him frown and his eyes have gone sadder than she ever wants to see them again, not now that she’s had her chance to see them so happy. _He_ pictured it, she realizes. He pictured them getting it right from the start, that night that was supposed to be their beginning.

“I only mean,” she’s worried she can’t explain herself fast enough, “so much has happened in the last year. There was so much that could have torn us apart, even then. Ra’s, The League, Malcolm, _Sara_...”

The furrow in his brow goes deeper with every example, but he still doesn’t speak, and her heart is sinking rapidly, so she goes for a long shot.

“Plus, I mean, you had only _just_ realized that you loved me.”

“No,” he rasps out, pausing as he clips on his suspenders to turn to her forcefully. Of course this is where he finds his voice. “You’re wrong.”

“About what?”

“When I knew.”

It takes her a moment to read in his insistent eyes that he’s not just being combative, he’s got something in mind. A specific mark on his timeline, just like she has on hers.

“Fine then,” she challenges, running her fingertips under the straps on his chest. “When did you know?”

“Russia.” he blurts out, wincing as he realizes at the same time she does why that sounds like it sounds. Unsurprisingly, she finds her words first.

“Russia.” She lets the suspenders snap back and aims to level him with her glare. “Russia, where you slept with another woman, Russia?”

“Yes,” he admits, dropping his voice so low she almost misses when he adds, “but I said your name when I came.”

She drops the dress. Actually lets the beautiful, nostalgic red fabric fall to the patterned, probably gross, hotel carpet.

“I’m sorry,” she blinks at his reddening face. “You what now?”

“When I was...with Isabel,” he stammers nervously. “I said your name, when I…”

“Why?” It’s literally the only question she can think of.

“I don’t know,” he mutters. “It’s not like I did it intentionally.”

“Oliver.”

“I don’t know Felicity, okay? I was thinking of you, I guess, and she said some things to me that…”

“She got to you,” she nods knowingly. “She never liked me, even before...all that.”

“No, she said things about me.” He’s clearer now, collecting himself to look in her eyes and explain. “Isabel saw right through me. Said I reminded her of what she saw in the mirror.”

“She was saying what she needed to say to exact her crazy, twisted revenge, Oliver,” Felicity babbles for both of their benefits, really. When you intentionally hit someone with a 15-passenger van, you really have to continue to think the worst of them for the rest of your life. “Though you two are both exceptionally attractive, great to look at in a mirror. Or, were, in her case.”

“She told me she knew I was smarter than I let on,” he says, thunderheads rolling across his blue eyes, “that I was driven like her.”

“You are smart,” Felicity agrees, tapping his chest and sliding her bright nails down his white dress shirt down to grab hold of his hands. “But you are not even close to being driven in the same way she was.”

“She also said I was lonely like her,” he admits quietly. “That’s when I started thinking about you.”

She still confused, it’s just becoming a better feeling. He squeezes her hands, and that’s better too.

“She was down there with me, in the bar, because she was lonely. She was nice to me, because she was lonely. She slept with me…”

“Yeah, that’s probably not the only reason she did _that_.” It comes out snappier than she means it to. Maybe it doesn’t.

“I wasn’t lonely though,” he dips his head so he can look her right in the eye. “She was wrong about me, and I knew that as soon as she said it. I wasn’t alone. I was waiting for you, remember?”

“So we could go rescue Digg,” she huffs out the memory, struck a little dumb at his words and the way he’s looking at her..

“Yeah,” he nods with a grin. “That too.”

“That was a good enough explanation that I am going to put on this dress now,” she tells him breathlessly, hazarding a glance at the clock, which really makes the decision for her. “Even though it doesn’t really match my nails. But we are not done talking about this.”

“Felicity, you put on that dress and I promise, no one’s going to be looking at your fingers.”

“They might be looking for a ring,” she blurts out without thinking. She turns quickly into the bathroom, flushing and furious at herself for the slip, and barely sees him choke out a little laugh and shove his hands into the pockets of his dress pants.

 

* * *

 

When she comes out of the bathroom, she’s actually stopped short at the sight of _him_. Suspenders, a tie and tailored jacket, still a little scruffy. And yeah, that look on his face.

“Felicity,” he nearly chokes out and for the first time on the whole trip, she finds herself nervous in front of him. It’s like she’s gone too far back in time, all the way back to when she was just an I.T. girl who kept her profile lower than her ponytail and he was _Oliver Queen_.

“You know,” she muses to distract herself. “This isn’t an accurate reenactment. You were out Arrow-ing before our first date. I met you at the restaurant.”

“This isn’t about being accurate, Felicity,” he insists, grabbing her coat and helping her slip it on, breathing his next words hot against her neck. “It’s about getting it right. I should have picked you up. I should have told you how fucking amazing you look in that dress.”

“Wait a second,” she realizes suddenly, turning to face him once she’s got her arms through the sleeves. “You said you realized in Russia, you said my name in Russia.”

“Yes.”

“What about Sara?” she remembers aloud, cringing as it registers that she’s actually bringing up his dead ex-girlfriend as he’s sweetly trying to recreate their first date. But she kind of needs to know now. “That was after. Did you ever…with Sara?”

“No,” he says, like he’s got gravel in his throat, dropping his eyes from her for the first time since he saw her in the dress. “Sara and I never said anything.”

He’s gone sad again and so she lays a hand on his cheek and scratches through his stubble and up into his hair in the way she’s learned that he likes. The way that makes his eyes drop close and his mouth turn up at the corners. The way that kind of reminds her of like, a floppy little German Shepherd puppy, not that she’d ever say that to his face (yet).

It works. When his eyes open, he’s back.

“I love you,” he growls, nuzzling into her hand. Total puppy. “I’ve loved you for longer than I even know.”

“I love you too, you big sap.”

She pressed a kiss to his cheek and takes his hand in hers, and they go out for Italian. Everybody likes Italian.

 

* * *

 

It’s not until they’re seated at the restaurant and the sommelier’s poured them something red and expensive that she realizes even though she was the one who said they needed to keep talking about Isabel, he’s the one who’s not finished.

“You know, when I said earlier, when I realized...it wasn’t when I said your name,” he blurts out, and she hushes him in embarrassment, glancing around them to check for small children and eavesdroppers. “It was when I saw your face. When you caught us, and then again, when we got back. When I told you…”

She goes from warm to cold so fast she’s probably got freezer burn.

“Ah yes, the old ‘because of what I do’ speech,” she bites, pulling her hands from his to give him bitter air quotes, which look as ridiculous as they sound. “I certainly do have a type: billionaire superheroes with a death wish.”

“Because you save us,” he says. “You’ve saved us all, Felicity. The Arrow, the Atom, the Flash, even Arsenal and the Canaries. You’re the one who saves the heroes.”

She laughs for a second at the ridiculous thing he’s said, but he doesn’t join her. His eyes are deadly serious and boring into hers.

“You saved my life, Felicity,” he says in a low voice that makes parts of her body feel like they’re starting to liquefy. “Don’t pretend like you don’t know that. You saved me so many times over, in every possible way. Most recently, when you put on a goddamn robot suit and caught me when I was falling to my death.”

“Ray asked me what you would do in that situation,” she remembers, reaching for his hands again but unable to pull her eyes from his. “He was talking about saving the city, but I knew... it was _you_ up there.”

“You’ve saved my life dozens of times, maybe hundreds” he continues. “Over the comms, keeping an eye out for me, figuring out something brilliant that kept us a step ahead...”

“Plus when I brought Barry in that first time,” she interrupts, trying to keep them at least a little on the light side tonight. She doesn’t dwell on how twisted it is that this counts as light. “He stopped your blood from turning into chocolate pudding.”

“He did,” Oliver admits with a grimace that turns to a mischievous grin. “Did I not thank you for that?”

She barks out a laugh. “No, you never did.”

He squeezes her hands and pulls one of them up to press a kiss to her palm and then continues, still so serious.

“You saved my life when my mother shot me,” he says, unconsciously looking down the scar on his shoulder. “Before you even knew if you could trust me. You drove me to the foundry and you rewired that AED and helped Digg bring me back to life.”

She looks at him strangely again, because there’s no way he could actually remember that, and he chuckles. “You think he didn’t start bragging about you the second you ran up those stairs?”

“I think that’s when I knew,” she admits breathlessly, remembering the frantic drive to the Foundry, how relieved she had been to see John, even as he pulled his gun on her, how her heart had beaten faster every time Oliver’s had stopped. “I didn’t even know what it was yet. But there was something in my chest...when we didn’t know if you were going to wake up. And it’s never really gone away.”

“I know the feeling,” he tells her, eyes going stormy again. “When you went out that night and Ray...when I couldn’t be the one to keep you safe. I almost went right through Diggle trying to get to you.”.

“I’m sure that must have been hard,” she counters, as sympathetic as she can muster while her mind is flooded with memories of the last year’s mix of uncertainty and terror. “And I love you, but trust me, you do _not_ know the feeling. It was so much worse…”

“On the mountain and in Nanda Parbat,” he answers for both of them. “You saved me there too. Even though you weren’t with me. You gave me something to live for.”

“Tatsu said...” Tears are just running openly down her face now, and she thanks whatever gods there are for him and for waterproof mascara as she trails off.

“Your name was the first thing I said when I woke up,” he nods. “And when I...when he tried to turn me into Al Sah-him, you were the only thing that kept me sane.”

For as much misery as she felt after leaving him behind in Nanda Parbat, she never fully let herself think of how he had suffered, worried the anguish would up and consume her. She nearly tips over the edge thinking about it now, but he grounds her, holding her eyes and telling her everything in the crazy honest way that they’ve discovered in these last weeks. She loves him so much.

“In the dungeon, I’d start to slip, and I’d think of you,” he tells her darkly. “But I didn’t picture your happy life, like I told you I would.”

She remembers that moment: standing in the firelight, saying goodbye without using the words, pressing her forehead to his and wondering if she’d ever get the chance again.

“I pictured _our_ life,” he chokes out, squeezing her hands tight. “The two of us together. What could have happened, how things could have been if nothing had gone wrong…”

“From the beginning,” she finishes for him, swiping at the tears left on her cheeks, finally fully understanding the importance of this night and this scene and this dress. “I get it, Oliver. And you have to know that you deserve it.”

“We both do.” His echoing words make them both smile softly and pull them back from the dark place, back to love and light and a candlelit dinner and a new life together.

On their second first date, though, they still don’t make it through the first course. But this time, it’s not because they’re nervous. It’s because they know each other all too well. It’s not because he’s trying to explain to her how much she means to him. It’s because she already knows. It’s not because an RPG goes off. It’s because she blows his self-control to bits when she reminds him that another thing he didn’t get to do that night is take the red dress off of her.

 

* * *

 

He pulls her to her feet with fire in his eyes, tossing a wad of bills onto the table, save one to slide into the hand of the coat check attendant. He pays the kid extra to take a ten minute break, but it only takes him five to make her come, pressed in between what feel like expensive furs, his lips hot against her throat and his hand up under her pretty red dress as she pants his name into his ear.

When they straighten themselves up and make their way to the valet stand, she assumes that they’re headed back to the hotel for round two. So she’s more than a little surprised when they end up on a high hilltop overlooking the lights of Starling City. Something’s up, but he’s quiet for a long time, eyes alternating between her and the skyline, as they sit on the hood of the Porsche.

“You saved me too, you know,” she whispers when she can’t stand the silence any longer. “My life could have been so boring.”

She hears him spit out a quiet laugh and cringes a little at the bitterness and self-deprecation she can sense in it. He’s feeling guilty, he thinks she was joking.

“I’m serious, Oliver,” she continues in a rush. “Before you, I...I didn’t have a lot. I had my job and I had my computers. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t have a lot of confidence. I didn’t have a lot of love in my life. I didn’t have a lot of anything.”

He turns to her with the same face she remembers from her one happy memory of Nanda Parbat, when he was bathed in candlelight and looking at her like he never could have believed what she was telling him. So she tells him again.

“You changed all of that. You changed everything.”

“ _Felicity_ …”

He takes her hands in his, that disbelieving yet hopeful look still in his eyes, and she feels him slip something on her right ring finger.

“Oliver, what...”

“Still not asking,” he assures her quickly, melting her heart with his cautious optimism and his repeated sentiments. “I just wanted to see it on you.”

She realizes she does too, looking down and gasping audibly at the ring, which is nothing like she’s ever pictured and all the more perfect for it.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s you and me, Felicity,” he tells her, wrapping an arm around her like the emerald stones wrap behind the smaller diamonds. He’s talking about the bands of the ring, but he’s also talking about something else. “From here on out. Whatever happens when we get back. Whatever happens with your job, whatever happens with my life. _Whatever you need_.”

“Oliver,” she breathes, but there’s nothing to say except, “you too. Whatever you need.”

He bends down to kiss her then, and it’s chaste and simple, but sweet with possibility. When they pull back, the whispered “I love yous” get tangled together in the space between their lips and she kisses him again, just because she needs to.

“I’ve come back to this city so many times," he says to the Starling skyline, running his hand down her arm and tracing his thumb and forefinger over the ring, rubbing almost absently. "Out of guilt, or obligation…”

“Or because John and I came and dragged you,” she teases, snuggling in closer and tucking her head under his chin.

“That too,” he muses, and she can feel him smile where his chin is pressed against her forehead. “But it never felt like coming home. Until now.”

He tightens his arm around her, and she knows he can feel it too. Their escapist adventure is coming to an end, but the real journey is just beginning. And it’s the two of them, together.

“You’re my home, Felicity.”

 

* * *

 

p.s. [Here’s the ring](http://www.kay.com/images/products/1329/132924705_MV_ZM.jpg) if anybody's curious. Thanks to everyone for the love on this series! Come say hey on Tumblr ([theshipsfirstmate](http://theshipsfirstmate.tumblr.com/))!


End file.
